United States Electoral College

“ B The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide election as the means to implement its power to appoint members of the electoral college. ”

“ Each person for whom votes were cast for President in each State shall be credited with such proportion of the electoral votes thereof as he received of the total vote of the electors therein for President. In making the computations, fractional numbers less than one one-thousandth shall be disregarded unless a more detailed calculation would change the result of the election. The person having the greatest number of electoral votes for President shall be President. ”

“ At the heart of our Constitution is a commitment to popular sovereignty. At the core of that framework is the election of representatives to the United States Congress and the establishment of the Electoral College as the method of selection for the President and Vice President of the United States. The democratically elected Members of the Congress are charged with legislating and carrying important constitutional duties on behalf of the American people. ”

“ The new situation will enable those States, when relationships are resumed, to claim twenty-eight Representatives beside their just proportion. Twenty-eight votes to be cast here and in the Electoral College for those held not fit to sit as jurors, not fit to testify in court, not fit to be plaintiff in a suit, not fit to approach the ballot-box! Twenty-eight votes to be more or less controlled by those who once betrayed the Government, and for those so destitute, we are assured, of intelligent instinct as not to be fit for free agency! ”

“ Under the Constitution, if no candidate receives a majority of electoral college votes, this triggers a process where the House of Representatives decides the president. When that happens, each State gets one vote for President, chosen by the Representatives from that state. ”

“ But, independently of other reasons that will be discussed in a moment, any such distinction finds persuasive refutation in the Federal Electoral College whereby the President of the United States is chosen on principles wholly opposed to those now held constitutionally required in the electoral process for statewide office. ”

“ The electoral college was created to devolve the power of selecting Presidential electors to the States. The electoral college is, without question, an inseparable friend to those who believe that every American across our vast country deserves to be heard.
If Congress were given the power to overturn the States’ elections, what terrible chaos would ensue every 4 years. Imagine the furor against the electoral college if Congress becomes a forum to overturn States’ electoral college slates.
It is one thing to be angry. It is another to focus one’s anger in constructive ways. ”

“ The candidate who achieves a majority of 270 or more electoral votes wins the election.
⁠The flaws of such an electoral system are self-evident. First, as the president-elect may not be the winner of the national popular vote, there is a lack of broader representation. Second, as each state gets to decide its own electoral rules, this may create confusion and disorder. Third, the winner-takes-all system exacerbates inequality among states and between political parties. It leads to a huge waste of votes and discourages voter turnout. ”

“ PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I’m going to let the President answer the second part of that question. But, as you know, the whole concept of that came up perhaps a little bit before, but it came out as a reason why the Democrats lost an election — which, frankly, they should have been able to win, because the Electoral College is much more advantageous for Democrats, as you know, than it is to Republicans. ”

“ Counting the votes of the electors, a function that the 12th Amendment assigns to Congress, is an administrative and largely ceremonial act. Our job is simply to count the votes certified by each State—nothing more. We should not attempt to usurp the roles of the voters, the States, or the electoral college. ”

“ There were then thirty-eight states in the Union, casting 369 electoral votes. This made 185 necessary for a choice; and when the returns were all in, it appeared that, if the Republicans could secure the electoral votes of South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, and Oregon, they would have exactly 185. In these states, however, a dispute was raging as to which set of electors, Republican or Democratic, was elected. Each claimed to be; and, as the result depended on them, each set met and voted. It was then for Congress to decide which should be counted. ”

“ With Americans the word "unconstitutional" never in popular practice has the comprehensive and indefinite British meaning. As Americans have no term in common use to denote the unwritten part of their Constitution, so they have none at all with which to refer to an infraction of it. The {106} expression has yet to be coined for the American public to employ should the Electoral College act as it did in Washington's day, viz. each elector exercise his individual discretion in voting for a president, or should a president be elected for a third term, whether or not consecutive. ”

“ Quite naturally, for the work of electing a candidate presupposes a state of mind very different from that of serene deliberation. In 1800 the electors acted simply as automata recording the victory of their party, and so it has been ever since. In our own time presidents and vice-presidents are nominated, not without elaborate intrigue, by special conventions quite unknown to the Constitution; the people cast their votes for the two or three pairs of candidates thus presented, and the electoral college simply registers the results. ”

“ But the American people spoke clearly, and they spoke decisively: 81.2 million voters voted for Joe Biden—81.2; 74.2 million voted for Donald Trump; 51.3 percent of the vote went for Joe Biden; 46.8 percent of the vote was for Donald Trump; 306 electoral college votes for Joe Biden; 232 electoral college votes for Donald Trump. Four years earlier, Donald Trump referred to that kind of outcome as a “landslide” for him, and he lost the popular vote by 3 million votes.
But accepting the outcome of the election can be difficult when our political party doesn’t win. We have all felt that before. ”

“ Twice it has broken down to an extent that has threatened the safety of the government, and twice it has placed in office men not fairly elected, thus defeating the will of the people. The Electoral College has lost its object, and only endangers the country in every Presidential election. An amendment to the constitution, doing away with it, and making the President elected by the people, is the most necessary revision the compact needs.
The President has not, as even the convention feared he might, endeavored to make himself king or dictator ”

“ The Electoral Colleges do not elect, but merely report the result of an election. This, on the surface, is a change in the direction of a more complete democracy. What was devised as a check on the popular impulse of the moment has broken down, and the people have taken into their own hands the mission they were expected to entrust to a small representative body. ”

“ Those who have been for years calling attention to the pressing necessity of throwing about the ballot-box and about the elector further safeguards, in order that our elections might not only be free and pure, but might clearly appear to be so, will welcome the accession of any who did not so soon discover the need of reform. The national Congress has not as yet taken control of elections in that case over which the Constitution gives it jurisdiction, but has accepted and adopted the election laws of the several States, provided penalties for their violation and a method of supervision. ”

“ History has now favored the voter, and in each of the several States the citizens themselves vote for Presidential electors. When the state legislature vests the right to vote for President in its people, the right to vote as the legislature has prescribed is fundamental; and one source of its fundamental nature lies in the equal weight accorded to each vote and the equal dignity owed to each voter. ”